# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Deaf children learn to listen and speak fluently.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Century: America's Time - 1920-1929: Boom To Bust

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Introduction

Synopsis: Ben and Rose are the two main characters in this story. Ben wishes he could find the father that he has never met and Rose wishes she could be with an actress whose life she tracks by cutting out newspaper clippings and keeping them in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers something in his mom's room and Rose reads a newspaper headline, they each begin a journey to find something for which they've longed.
The two stories are set 50 years apart and although they are independent, readers will discover how they intertwine with one story being told through pictures and the other through text. Read along with this, and we hope that you, like us, will be Wonderstruck!

"Another entrancing, exquisitely illustrated novel...Older kids and adults alike will be mesmerized by the interlocking stories.
A verbal and visual marvel."
- Family Circle

Introduction Video

In this video, we learn about the basic idea behind the story, "Wonderstruck". Students will use this video to get an idea of how the story will be told, and it will hopefully provide just enough information to entice them to read the book.
Length of Video: 1:15

Museum Tour Video

We were given permission by Scholastic to download and create an accessible version of this video in which Brian Selznick, the author of Wonderstruck, takes us on a tour of the American Natural History Museum where much of the book takes place.
Length of Video: 17 minutes

This PowerPoint explains how to use the annotation worksheets that are associated with each section from the book. In each section, you will find a corresponding annotation worksheet.
Time to Complete: 10-20 minutes

This powerpoint will help guide students through understanding what the 1920's were like. This type of activity helps students have a clear picture of the timeframe that is shown in the story when they come upon it as they read.
Time to Complete: 10-30 minutes

This powerpoint will help you as you teach the vocabulary that may be new to students as they read the book. It can be used as is, or it can be used to disperse to students and have them insert videos into the "blank" areas showing their comprehension of the vocabulary word. (This would typically be done if students have handheld devices or access to computers/laptops with a webcam.)
Time to Complete: This will be determined by how it is used by the teacher.

This is a cloze worksheet to assess student comprehension of the vocabulary that is presented throughout the book, and in class.
Time to Complete: 20 minutes

This is a 2nd cloze worksheet to assess student comprehension of the vocabulary that is presented throughout the book, and in class.
Time to Complete: 20 minutes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Synopsis: Ben and Rose are the two main characters in this story. Ben wishes he could find the father that he has never met and Rose wishes she could be with an actress whose life she tracks by cutting out newspaper clippings and keeping them in a scrapbook.

# data[].attributes.body
From the Reading Rockets site.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Biography

From the time Brian Selznick was a young boy, it was clear that he had a gift for drawing. On his kindergarten report card, Brian's teacher noted that he was a good artist. At school Brian's classmates liked to gather around to see what he was sketching. During his childhood in New Jersey, Brian's parents encouraged him to take art classes. At the end of high school, Brian decided to attend art school instead of a traditional liberal arts college. Brian's father, an accountant, worried that his son wouldn't be able to make a living as an artist.

After high school, Brian Selznick attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD). While at RISD, Selznick wanted to design sets for theatre productions. Yet after graduating, he realized that he actually wanted to become a children's book illustrator. To learn about children's literature, Selznick took a job at Eeyore's Books for Children, a popular bookstore in Manhattan. For three years he read books, sold books, and worked on his own. Selznick's first book, The Houdini Box, was published in 1991 while he was still working at the bookstore.

Soon Brian Selznick earned a reputation as a talented up-and-coming illustrator. He earned awards for illustrating books written by authors such as Pam Muñoz Ryan, Andrew Clements, and Barbara Kerley. In 2002 Selznick's illustrations for The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins earned him a Caldecott Honor. In 2007 Selznick branched out into new territory when he published the first novel-length book that he both wrote and illustrated. This breakthrough masterpiece, The Invention of Hugo Cabret, immediately jumped to the top of The New York Times Best Sellers List, and in 2008 it won the most prestigious American award for an illustrator - the Caldecott Medal.

Brian Selznick currently divides his time between Brooklyn, New York and San Diego, California.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
From the time Brian Selznick was a young boy, it was clear that he had a gift for drawing. On his kindergarten report card, Brian's teacher noted that he was a good artist. At school Brian's classmates liked to gather around to see what he was sketching.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
It's not often that a writer can illustrate his own books, but Brian Selznick is that rare find. He began his career as an artist collaborating with authors on children's books. But he gradually realized that he wanted to tell his own stories in both words and pictures - and to do that, Selznick invented a unique narrative device.

Wonderstruck is both a novel and a picture book, a form Selznick first experimented with in The Invention of Hugo Cabret, when he had the idea of telling a story in much the same way that film does.

"I thought: Is there a way of combining what the cinema can do with panning, and zooming in and out, and edits, and what a picture book can do with page turns, and what a novel does?" Selznick says.

Selznick's illustrations work like a camera, zooming in on details and following his characters around as they move through the world. In the beginning of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, the reader follows a boy through a grate in the wall, down a hallway, to an old man in a toy booth who sees a clock, and behind the number 5 in the clock, there's the boy ... ( Click here to see that opening sequence of drawings.)

In Wonderstruck, Selznick wanted to take this narrative experiment a step further. "I had this idea to try to tell two different stories," he says. "What if I told one story just with pictures, and then told a completely different story that was set 50 years later with words? And then had these two separate stories weave back and forth until they came together at the end?"

Wonderstruck is the story of Rose and Ben, a young boy and girl who live years and worlds apart. By the end of the book, the reader learns they have a special connection. But from early on, they have one thing in common: She is deaf, and he loses his hearing when he is struck by lightning.

Selznick says the idea for the book began forming when he saw a documentary about deafness and deaf culture. One of the deaf educators emphasized how hyper-attuned deaf people are to the visual world. So Selznick set out to tell the story of a deaf character in pictures. "We experience [Rose's] story in a way that perhaps might echo the way she experiences her own life," he explains.

Rose's story, told almost entirely through Selznick's compelling black-and-white illustrations, alternates with Ben's story, which unfolds in written form. At first, the reader is not sure how the two stories relate, but here and there, the characters' worlds collide. Both get caught in a storm, both go in search of their parents, both find refuge in New York's Museum of Natural History (one of Selznick's favorite destinations when he was a kid growing up in New Jersey). When Ben and Rose finally do meet, Selznick says, the book becomes all about how we communicate with each other.

"At the end of the story, we have scenes where there's a deaf character who signs, a hearing character who signs, and a deaf character who doesn't sign - and they all have to have a conversation," Selznick says. "And so who speaks, who writes, who can sign ... it all becomes mixed up until they can figure out a way to communicate."

Creating these books is a complicated process, Selznick says, and he is always a little surprised in the end when everything comes together. When he's in the middle of it, it's a little like looking for buried treasure.

"It's sort of like going through a treasure map backwards in a certain way, where I know what I want it to be, but I don't know how to get there," he says. "It does end up feeling like I have been on this really exciting journey that I ultimately hope that the reader will be excited to be on, too."

A writer and artist who is fascinated with film, Selznick is about to see a fantasy come true: In November, the film version of The Invention of Hugo Cabret, directed by Martin Scorcese, will be released on the big screen.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
'Wonderstruck': A Novel Approach To Picture Books

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
It's not often that a writer can illustrate his own books, but Brian Selznick is that rare find. He began his career as an artist collaborating with authors on children's books. But he gradually realized that he wanted to tell his own stories in both words and pictures - and to do that, Selznick invented a unique narrative device.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A boy named Ben longs for the father he has never known. A girl named Rose dreams of a mysterious actress whose life she chronicles in a scrapbook. When Ben discovers a puzzling clue in his mother's room, and Rose reads an enticing headline in the newspaper, both children set out alone on desperate quests to find what they are missing.

# data[].attributes.body
Some more suggestions

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
When visually creative worlds and powerful narratives collide.

# data[].attributes.body
Interesting perspective on the deaf experience.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
"Opening our Ears to the Deaf" Pamela Weisman at TEDxCoMo

# data[].attributes.body
The movie that inspired Brian Selznick to write Wonderstruck.

# data[].attributes.body
Questions for the end of the book.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Reading Guide Questions
Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers!

1. How does Ben feel about living with his aunt and uncle and sharing a room with his cousin? Describe his feelings when he finds Janet in his mother's house at night. Why is he so affected by the locket and the book he finds in his mother's room?

2. What are the early connections between Ben's story and Rose's story? Discuss how those connections—the places where they feel trapped, their loneliness, the storms and lightning—help to illuminate and expand on the individual stories.

3. Discuss the meaning of the quote Ben's mother liked: "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." How does the quote relate to each of the stories? How many ways does star imagery come into Ben's story and Rose's story?

4. When do we first learn that Rose is deaf? How does that revelation intersect with Ben's story? Discuss the events that compel each of them to run away. How are their experiences similar and how are they different?

5. Compare Rose's encounter with her mother to Ben's first experiences in New York. Why does Rose run away from her mother? Why does Ben run away from the boy who tries to help him? What draws both Ben and Rose to the museum?

6. Compare the powerful experiences Ben and Rose have with the meteorite Ahnighito and the wishes they make.

7. Why does Jamie lead Ben to the wolf exhibit? Why does Ben decide to trust Jamie, and later, why does he become angry with Jamie?

8. How does the storytelling structure in the book change when Ben finally finds Kincaid's Bookstore? Describe Rose's feelings when she sees Ben and realizes who he might be. Describe Ben's feelings when he realizes his connection to Rose.

9. Discuss Ben's thought that "maybe we are all cabinets of wonders" [p. 574]. What does he mean? What does the Cabinet of Wonders in his father's book and in the storage room at AMNH represent to Ben? Why is he so drawn to the idea of those early museums?

10. Why is it important for Rose to take Ben to the Queens Museum to tell him the story of his father? What does the Panorama mean to her and how does it relate to her childhood? Why does Jamie follow them?

11. Compare Ben's experience during the blackout in Minnesota when he is home alone with the blackout in New York when he is with Rose. What do you think Ben's next chapter will be—staying in New York or returning to Minnesota?

Unless otherwise stated, this discussion guide is reprinted with the permission of Scholastic. Any page references refer to a USA edition of the book, usually the trade paperback version, and may vary in other editions.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Reading guide for Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Please be aware that this discussion guide may contain spoilers! How does Ben feel about living with his aunt and uncle and sharing a room with his cousin? Describe his feelings when he finds Janet in his mother's house at night. Why is he so affected by the locket and the book he finds in his mother's room?

# data[].attributes.body
Read by the author

# data[].attributes.body
Read by the author

# data[].attributes.body
Read by the author

# data[].attributes.body
Section three.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Uploaded by Katherine Detrick on 2014-04-08.

# data[].attributes.body
Section section read out loud.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Uploaded by Katherine Detrick on 2014-04-08.

# data[].attributes.body
First section of the book

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Uploaded by Katherine Detrick on 2014-04-08.